Of Friendships and Falling Down Rabbit Holes
by B.A. Tyler
Summary: Hawkeye, first-person POV. "After I got home from the war, I figured that would be the end of the drama in my life. Or at least, the major drama. I assumed that the end of the war meant the end of the truly life-changing, soul-shaking, mind-blowing experiences that had been commonplace over there. How wrong I was." Updated with Chapters 8 and 9 - now complete!
1. Chapter 1

**Of Friendships and Falling Down Rabbit Holes**

_September 1997_

After I got home from the war—sorry, the police action—in Korea, I figured that would be the end of the drama in my life. Or at least, the major drama. Everybody has mini-dramas, of course; it goes with the territory. You live, shit happens. But I assumed that the end of the war meant the end of the truly life-changing, soul-shaking, mind-blowing experiences that had been commonplace over there. Everything from that point on was bound to be small potatoes, when you compared it to snipers, land mines, unexploded bombs two feet away, life-or-death decisions on a daily basis in surgery, and Frank Burns.

On the first morning of my post-Korea life, I stood on the front porch of my dad's house in Crabapple Cove, Maine, inhaling the sweet summer smell of my beloved hometown and looking across the street at old Mrs. Zukowski weeding her garden. I smiled, realizing that crabgrass and dandelions would be the only enemies I'd have to worry about now.

I was looking forward to the transition from calamity to calm. I felt like I'd been running on a hamster wheel for three years and suddenly somebody had stuck a large index finger into my cage, bringing my wheel to a halt. I was dizzy and stunned by the abrupt change, but ready to just plop down into my wood chips for a good rest.

Gone were the Swamp, bad coffee, ice-cold showers, mess-tent inedibles, and living with rats—_actual _rats, that is, not Charles Winchester or Frank Burns. The next chapter of my life beckoned. I was going to join my dad in his small-town practice, getting the hometown folks to say "ah," having the mundane give-and-take with patients that I'd missed so much in the hustle, bustle, and horror of treating wounded and dying soldiers. At least at first, I would live with Dad too, until I had time to do some house-hunting and planning.

I also knew I had some mending to do. A lot had been taken out of me, taken away from me, and my mental state was still on the tenuous side. I had Sidney Freedman's phone number in my wallet at all times; I would continue to call him for many years after Korea, and it wasn't until decades later that I made those calls as a friend only, and not partly as a recovering patient.

Anyway, I think you've got the picture. I was a little worse for wear but somehow still standing, and ready to put the past three years behind me. Goodbye, Army surgeon. Bring on "Hawkeye Pierce: The Halcyon Years." I was certain my life would forever after be humdrum, refreshingly devoid of tumult and adventure.

How wrong I was.


	2. Chapter 2

Well, to be fair, the first two, three years were exactly that: dull, ordinary… pretty wonderful.

I did work and live with Dad, with amazingly few ripples in our relationship. My time in Korea had mellowed us both. We overlooked a lot of stuff that might have sparked screaming matches in the pre-war versions of ourselves. We were just happy to be together, and when I did finally move out of his house in the summer of 1955, it was tougher to do than I ever imagined. But it was time. There comes a point when a man in his 30s really should stop scoring in his boyhood bedroom while his dad sleeps a couple doors down the hall. Call me crazy.

But don't let me stray too far from the story at hand. My wife says that sometimes she wishes she had a roadmap of my brain, so she could follow the breakneck turns and unexpected dead ends that my thoughts travel. As I was saying, my life was progressing quietly and comfortably for the most part, until that Saturday in April of 1956 when my phone rang.

I answered with my standard greeting at the time, "Yello. Hawkeye Pierce at your service."

The voice on the other end was one I had not heard in probably five or six months, although we were in touch regularly by mail. Radar—still sounding like a kid of 19 even though he was by this time in his mid-20s—said, "Hawkeye?" And just in that one word, I heard the distress in his voice.

Although instantly on alert, I kept my voice light, my mood playful. If he was calling me with upsetting news, what kind of a self-respecting neurotic would I be if I didn't try to deflect it?

"Hi Radar, how the hell are ya? Long time no hear."

So much for deflecting the inevitable. "Hawkeye, I'm sorry, but there's… there's something I need to talk to you about. It's bad."

With a resigned sigh, I took a seat at my kitchen table and sobered up. Bottom line: I loved this kid; whatever he needed, I'd be there for him. Even if it meant I was about to find myself knee-deep in some kind of trouble. "What's up, Radar?"

Despite his obvious agitation, he went silent for a long moment. I waited him out, giving him time to collect his thoughts. My stomach was knotting up as I felt the stress traveling through the phone line from Ottumwa, Iowa.

Finally he spoke again, and even though it doesn't look like much on the printed page, the words sent a chill from the back of my neck down to my ass. "Hawkeye, you know how I can sometimes… know ahead of time that something's going to happen?"

The man was called Radar for a reason. I flashed back to a time, during the war, when I'd found myself on trial, accused of mutiny by everyone's favorite paranoid, Frank Burns. When Radar took the stand, he recited his nickname rather than his given name, Walter. The presiding officer wondered, "Radar?" And the corporal responded, "Oh, sometimes I know things are gonna happen before they do. My mom says I get it from my Uncle Ernest. He knew he was gonna die about a week before it happened, so he moved next door to the undertaker so he wouldn't have so far to travel."

That was about the most succinct way of describing the kid's… gift as I'd ever heard.

Now I said, suddenly finding it difficult to force words out, "Yes, Radar. I know." My hand holding the phone had gotten sweaty.

"Well, I had one. You know, one of my feelings. It was strong and clear and…" he trailed off, and I knew why. Radar didn't have a particularly extensive vocabulary, and he was struggling for a word that was never going to come unless he opened a thesaurus.

"Vivid?" I suggested.

"No," he said. "Well, yeah, it was vivid. But what I meant was… uh, like there's no question, it's going to happen."

"Incontrovertible," I supplied. Sometimes my inner-thesaurus had a tendency to overlook the obvious choices in favor of as many syllables as possible, as if I were perpetually playing a game of Scrabble.

"Well… if you say so, sir. But whatever you want to call it, it scared me. It's bad, and I didn't know what to do. So I thought I'd talk to you. You'd know what to do."

"Radar, slow down." I started to pace around my kitchen, the phone cord tangling and untangling as I did. "Start by telling me what your… feeling was. Then I'll see if I can help."

"Oh sir, you _have _to help—"

"I'm not a 'sir' anymore, Radar. And calm down. We'll try to figure this out, I promise. I'm listening."

He took another pause, this one shorter, and I could sense him working to slow his frantic thoughts. "OK, sir. OK."

Still with the "sir." I ran a hand through my hair and looked at the clock on the wall. Five minutes past noon, and my Saturday had gone from "afternoon spent at the fishing hole, night spent on the town" to God only knew what, thanks to this phone call.

"There's just no good way of saying it," Radar continued, "so I'm sorry if it seems mean to blurt it out like this, but it's Major Houlihan."

I stopped my pacing. "What about Margaret?"

"She's going to die, sir. Soon."


	3. Chapter 3

"What?" I managed. "When? Why?" Clearly I should have become a journalist; I had three of the "five Ws" down pat.

"I don't know, sir."

"You don't know what?"

"Where or when or why… any of that, that you just asked."

I was fidgety as hell but suddenly rooted in place. My feet would not move. Now instead of looking at the clock, I stole a glance at my calendar. It was April, all right, but long past April Fools' Day. I didn't really think this was a practical joke anyway. I could hear Radar's breathing on the other end of the line… quick, shallow breaths. He believed his premonition right down to his toes. He hadn't been lying—he was scared.

Somebody had to be the soothing presence here, and I guessed it would have to be me. I looked up at my ceiling and saw—weirdly—a blob of dried ketchup up there. I had no idea how that had happened. When would I have taken the ketchup bottle and aimed _upward_? Then again, I'd owned this house for less than a year, so it could have been a leftover blob from the previous owners, but that thought kind of disgusted me more.

I shook my head. _Focus, Pierce. _"OK, Radar, hold on a second. Let's take one giant step backwards, and think. OK?"

"OK, sir."

Good start, but where was I heading? I tried reason. "OK, listen. I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the God's honest truth. When we… when we lost Henry Blake, you didn't know about that ahead of time. Did you?"

"Oh no sir!" He was beyond emphatic, as if I were an ass to even consider the idea. "I sure didn't. You know I woulda said something if I had!"

"Well then there you go," I said. "These hunches of yours… they're not exactly perfect, are they?"

But he was on a five-second delay or something, still aghast that I thought he might have prevented Henry's death. "Geez, Colonel Blake was like my father…"

"Of course, Radar, I know and I'm sorry. I was just trying to point out that your feelings aren't always right. Do you follow me?"

For what may have been the first time in our long and storied friendship, the kid had condescension dripping off his tongue as he replied, "It doesn't work like that, Hawkeye. _Not _knowing about something ahead of time is one thing. But if I _do_ get a feeling—a feeling as strong as this one is—it happens. Every time."

That statement threw me for a loop. I wondered, probably for the first time, just how extensive this kid's ESP was… how often he got premonitions and _didn't _share them, because maybe they were unimportant most of the time, and maybe he was worried about losing friends if he revealed himself to be so unusual. What a burden to have to carry around.

I started pacing again, hoping to jumpstart my brain. He was calling me after this particular premonition because it was an emergency. Somebody we both knew and loved was in danger, at least according to Radar's radar. And I was coming to the realization that I was going to have to spring into action.

"Radar, do I have enough time to drive to Boston? Before this happens?"

"Boston? What do you—" he started, and then stopped himself. "Oh, Major Houlihan's not living in Boston anymore."

"She's not?"

"No, sir. She's in San Diego now. She moved there in February. I keep track of everyone, you know. I keep a log. She wrote me with her new address."

February. That would explain why I hadn't known. She and I had exchanged Christmas cards as we did every December; at that time, she was still in Boston, still working at the same hospital as Charles. I hadn't heard from either one of them since the holidays. The whole group of us—the gang from the mighty 4077th—had never lost touch with one another, but neither were we in _constant _contact. Well, except for me and Beej. If I didn't talk to Beej at least once a week, I got the bends. As for the rest of us, we relied on Radar to keep tabs.

I tried to recall the last time I'd actually _seen_ Margaret. It'd been more than a year ago. I'd been in Boston and we'd met up for a three-hour lunch on a sunny Sunday. She'd been happy and laughing a lot, falling in love, she said, with a new beau.

The implication of what Radar had said finally sank in to my sluggish brain. "San Diego?" As in, all the way across the country.

"Yes sir. Actually, it's La Mesa, which is outside San Diego. I have the address, do you want it, are you going to fly out there, sir?" This last part came out in a rush as he got excited about the idea of Hawkeye Pierce intercepting Fate and saving the world.

"I don't know, Radar. Do I have time to get out there?" And, I added to myself, just what the hell did I think I was doing, buying into this warped fantasy of a possibly delusional young farmer?

But the thing was, I knew Radar better than that. We may have not been living in the same camp anymore, but fundamentally, our relationship was still one of mutual love, respect, and trust. There was no denying he had a touch of prescience, and I'd never known him to get this wound up about one of his hunches before. I couldn't dismiss his plea for help.

He sighed, but I don't think he was becoming impatient with me. I think he was frustrated that his so-called gift couldn't be more forthcoming. "I don't know when or where or why, sir," he repeated. "I told you everything I know. It's just a bad feeling—and a strong one—that Major Houlihan's going to die. That's all."

"But that's not all," I objected. "You said _soon_. You said that it happens soon."

"I think so, yeah. But I can't put a date or a time on it, if that's what you're asking me."

Now it was my turn to sigh. I was at a loss about what to do. My kingdom for a nice, manic OR shift where I was surefooted and confident and knew how to handle anything. This here… this was way out of my league.

But Radar forced my hand with what he said next. "Should I call her, sir? Is that what I should do?"

Oh good Lord, no. Call Margaret with the disturbing message that she might want to lock her door and crawl into bed because to venture out into the world might kill her? That's the last thing I wanted him to do.

It was absurd, laughable, maybe even stupid, but the decision was made. "I'll go out there, Radar. Give me her address. I'll book the next possible flight I can get."


	4. Chapter 4

After a few phone calls, it became obvious the smartest way to do this was drive the two hours to Boston and get a flight to San Diego from there. Flying out of Portland would have involved too many connecting flights and more hours than I had to spare. At least, that was my assumption, based on the paltry information I had. Margaret could have been in trouble at that very moment, for all I really knew.

I made good time on the road, reaching Boston in an hour and forty minutes, and wishing like hell it was the end of the line. But no, Margaret had to be uncooperative and living all the way over on the left coast now. Damn her nomadic nature.

Back in those days, I flew into and out of Boston fairly regularly, so I knew how to get to Logan Airport with one eye tied behind my back. Also, I'd done my surgical residency in Boston. It was a city I knew well and loved, and I always smiled when I passed the sign that indicated the city limits, as if being welcomed into the warm embrace of an old friend.

Charles still lived here, I was certain, even if Margaret didn't. Under less frenetic circumstances, I would have taken a few hours out of my travels to visit with the bald-headed wonder. But no detours this trip. Time was apparently of the essence.

The aviation gods were with me, because less than an hour after I arrived at Logan, I was sitting on a plane, awaiting takeoff. I was glad things were moving fast; I didn't want to stop and think, because thinking too much would surely change my mind. This was lunacy, but Radar's fear had been awfully motivating.

That said, I had no plan as I sat there waiting for the flight to get off the ground. I had even less than no plan… I had no earthly idea what I was doing. All this, just because of Radar. Was I really putting my entire life on hold at the whim of a four-eyed, maybe-five-foot farmer boy with a bizarre sixth sense? As Trapper once put it, "He's got the IQ of a houseplant."

That was a bit harsh. The kid may not have been the sharpest scalpel on the tray, but he was wise in his own peculiar way. And I did put some stock in that intuition of his. Let's say I didn't go to San Diego to at least check on Margaret, and then I later found out that something _had _happened to her… I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

But the reality was, I had no idea what I was trying to prevent exactly, so how could I know what to do? I'd grilled Radar some more before we got off the phone, in the hopes that he'd give me something more useful than "she's going to die," but he had nothing else to give. I would just have to try to make heads or tails of the situation once I got to Margaret's.

Trying (and failing) to get comfortable in my miniscule airline seat, I looked out the window and chuckled at the mission I was on. Who did I think I was, Superman? Faster than a speeding premonition? Able to leap tall hunches in a single bound?

Once the plane took off, I opened up the latest journal from the AMA and tried to read. At some point I realized my eyes had gone over the same paragraph again and again but the fascinating article on bowel resections was not registering at all. I set the journal aside and got out my notepad, starting a letter to B.J. "Dear Beej, I'm on my way to visit Margaret and save her from certain death. After I'm done in San Diego, maybe I'll head up to see you in Mill Valley." I reread those sentences and crumpled up the note. Men with butterfly nets would be following me around soon if I wasn't careful.

The woman on my left leaned over, as if we weren't already shoulder-to-shoulder. She looked to be in her late 50s, had a large bosom, and wore her glasses perched way down on her nose. Years later, I would turn on an episode of _The Andy Griffith Show _and see Aunt Bee, and I'd be instantly reminded of this woman. She tapped a finger on my medical journal and said, "Doctor, are you?"

I nodded politely, or tried to.

She lifted the long, flowered sleeve of her shirt to show me a nasty-looking rash on her forearm. "Any idea what this is, doctor? I've had it for at least a month… doesn't want to go away. Doesn't always itch, though. Just at times."

I had a feeling she was going to keep on rambling about what her rash did and didn't do if I let her. So I interrupted with a curt, "Sorry, ma'am, I'm a proctologist. Oh sure, I took Dermatology 101, but I was out the day they covered icky skin infections of the arm."

As I tell this story now, I'm embarrassed that I was so rude to a perfect stranger who seemed pleasant enough, even if she was looking for some free medical advice. All I can say in my defense is that the reason for my trip was wreaking havoc on my nerves. My mind kept playing out all kinds of scenarios of what could go wrong. I felt like a human grenade in constant worry that the pin would be pulled out at any second.

However obnoxious, my brushoff worked, and the woman left me alone with my thoughts. Stupid me. I should have welcomed her conversation with open arms.


	5. Chapter 5

Henry was killed in a plane.

For some reason, that was the first thought that came to me when I closed my eyes and leaned back, listening to the drone of the engines. In my more morbid moments, I wondered what must have gone through his mind when it happened. He undoubtedly was aware of the attack. Of the plane failing, and then falling. How terrifying that must've been.

Amiable, tenderhearted, easygoing Henry Blake hadn't deserved that kind of fate. He deserved to go home to Bloomington, Illinois, to run into the arms of his awaiting wife, to play pattycake with his kids again, to hang out with the gynecologist next door. He'd earned that kind of ending.

…_rule number one is young men die…_

Dammit, all of a sudden I felt like crying. That would've been all right if I were at home, but flying in a plane at 35,000 feet, with a bosomy librarian-type at my side… well, let's just say it would not have been the best idea.

We hit a pocket of turbulence then and my eyes snapped open. Instinctively I turned to look at my seatmate, but all she did was raise her eyebrows at me. I gave her a wan smile and wondered why I insisted on pegging her as a librarian. She could just as easily have been an international art thief who had a pilfered Picasso stashed in her checked baggage. Far be it from me to stereotype; after all, I sure didn't look like a surgeon, did I?

I was actually not a surgeon at that point in my life, having given it up for my dad's general practice in the Cove. It would be—believe it or not—a half-dozen more years before I picked up the scalpel again, taking a position at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. As Colonel Potter had so astutely observed, though, surgery's like riding a bicycle; you don't forget how to do it. Despite first-day jitters that sent me scrambling to the men's room to throw up before a routine appendectomy, I'm happy to report that I hadn't lost my touch.

My career at MMC didn't last as long as I expected, though. A year went by... my colleagues at the hospital were good eggs and it was gratifying to be a surgeon again, but I missed working with Dad and chatting up the Crabbies (as I liked to call them) while they sat on the crinkly white paper on the exam table. On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, I was in the middle of performing a cholecystectomy (sorry, that's gallbladder surgery, for those of you not playing Scrabble) when a nurse burst into the OR in hysterics and announced that President Kennedy had just been shot and killed in Dallas. I can't really explain why, but that national tragedy somehow lubricated the wheels in my head to the point where they rolled back in the direction of family practice. It didn't take a whole lot of soul-searching, to be honest. I was back working with Dad before the calendar flipped over to 1964, and he retired a few months after, leaving the practice entirely in my hands.

But let's get back to the friendly skies, shall we? Our plane ride smoothed out and the librarian/art thief, as I was now thinking of her, stuck her nose back in her magazine. The brief turbulence had actually succeeded in driving away my upsetting thoughts of Henry Blake, weirdly enough. Now my mind turned—for the zillionth time—to my phone conversation with Radar. As I rehashed it, I found myself growing angry. Thirty-three months after the war (…but who was counting?), and I was still playing big brother to these people. Radar needed to stop thinking of me as his hero. It was time to cut the ties—not completely, but at least a little bit. Right?

I shook my head as I looked out the window, arguing with myself. No, the fact of the matter was, we were forever bonded, all of us. Even Charles, although he would have rather voted for Adlai Stevenson than admit it. You go through a war together… assuming you all come out relatively OK on the other end, you've got yourself a second family.

When I was a kid, my friends Dickie Barber, Toby Wilder, and I called ourselves the Three Musketeers. Yeah, real original, I know. We may have been so lacking in imagination that we had to steal a moniker from some Brillo-headed French guy, but man, we were close. It seemed like we were together every waking moment… we spent our lazy summer days at the fishing hole or riding bikes through town or driving my dad up the wall if it was raining and we couldn't be outside.

I went to see this movie back in the mid-'80s called _Stand_ _by Me_, you know that picture? The last line went something like, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12." For most people, that's probably true, but not for me. I ended up becoming closer to the people at the 4077th than I even was to those fellow Musketeers, Toby and Dickie. And I didn't imagine there would ever be a time when I'd completely let go of my Korean War colleagues, despite (in some cases) an entire country between us.

So yeah, when a member of your family calls you and asks you to do something—asks you to help—you drop everything and do it, don't you? Of course. That's what it means to be family.

There was no telling how this little adventure was going to wind up. It was maybe—even probably—a fool's errand. But yes, Radar, sure… for you I'll go down the rabbit hole. What the hell. I always did enjoy a good tea party.


	6. Chapter 6

Courtesy of Radar, I had an address and even a phone number for Margaret, but I did not call her once I landed in San Diego. I mean, how would _that _conversation go? "Hey, Margaret, just flew across the country and I happen to be in your neighborhood, how's tricks?"

But now that I thought about it, showing up on her doorstep was going to lead me to essentially the same lame attempt at an explanation. Either way, I was going to look eminently stupid.

Better to look stupid in person, I reasoned. I rented a car and drove out to La Mesa, which Radar had mispronounced "La Meesa" on the phone. I didn't know the area at all, but I bought a map, and there was this quaint thing we did back in the 1950s. We asked directions. Or at least, some of us did. I know men have a reputation for not wanting to ask for that kind of help, but as for me, I happily asked at the gas station where I bought the map… and then again when I got lost once I turned off El Cajon Boulevard. I'm not proud.

I arrived at Margaret's house just after sunset, Pacific Time, on that Saturday evening. I was exhausted. My day had been utterly chaotic. I was feeling foolish, anxious, and dazed all at once. I stood there on her front porch clutching the paper that had her address on it, my fist poised to knock, and the look on my face must have been one of sheer bewilderment. If somebody had snapped a picture of me at that moment, the caption below it might have read: _Have you seen this man's marbles? Please return them to the Pierce family's lost and found. Reward offered. _

I took a deep breath and went through with it: _knock, knock._ For the first time, I wondered what the hell I would do if she wasn't home. I snorted. _Way to go, Pierce._ It was Saturday night, after all, and the woman was not married. She no doubt dated… this was Margaret Houlihan we were talking about, for God's sake. Or what if she's gone on a vacation, even? Not coming back for weeks. What then?

But the door opened almost right away, and there she stood, dressed in a pink robe (which was not nearly as nice as my old faithful red robe, I feel compelled to add), her hair pulled back into a ponytail but still as beautifully blonde as ever, her nose red and sore, a tissue clutched in her fist. "Hawkeye?" she said, clearly shocked… but also clearly ill. She laughed, coughed, then laughed again. "Wow, you're the last person I expected to find at my door."

"Margaret," I sputtered, mind spinning. "Are you sick? Is it the flu?"

What a weird way to greet somebody you hadn't seen in about a year, huh? But I couldn't help it. I had been assuming that if her life was in danger, it would be something like a car accident or an accident around the house, not an illness. I didn't know what to think, but as I may have mentioned, my brain was nearly useless by this point of my topsy-turvy day.

She launched into a phlegmy cough for a few seconds before assuring me, "No, no. It's just a cold." She waved me into her house, probably wanting to shut the door. So I stepped inside, my thoughts still racing. The common cold hadn't become fatal in the last few hours while I was in the air, had it? All of a sudden I wished I'd read that medical journal on the plane after all.

She pulled me into a brief hug, but we did not kiss. I mean yeah, I was more than happy to fly across the country to save her life, but I didn't want to catch her cold. She beamed at me, held me at arm's length as she studied my face. "What the hell brings you here? And how did you even know—?"

"Radar," I said, and what I meant was that he had given me her address. I didn't have any intention of telling her about his prediction. There was no way I was going to get into _that_. "I was… uh… on my way to visit B.J.," I stammered, "and I thought I'd stop down here first, since I was coming all the way out to California." That wasn't bad for off-the-cuff, and then all of a sudden, pure inspiration struck. I would have bet money that there was an actual lightbulb hovering above my head. "I was hoping you'd join me for a trip to Disneyland."

Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim, California, the year before… in July of 1955 to be exact. I honestly _had _wanted to visit the park, ever since I first heard of the place. Of course, what kid or kid-at-heart didn't? Holy hell, this sounded like an almost plausible story, and it was with great relief that I watched her eyes light up at the suggestion.

"Except…" I went on, looking her over. "You're sick. I don't want to drag you out if you're sick."

"Nonsense, Hawkeye, I'd love to go! I haven't been there yet." She gestured to her couch and we both sat down, but I kept some distance between us. Germs, you know. "But… you didn't mean tonight, did you?" she asked. "Kind of late to get started now, isn't it?"

"Uh," I brilliantly said. "Tomorrow?" I was winging the whole conversation, but I was impressing the hell out of myself with how well I was doing. Sometimes there are advantages to having a brain that runs (according to my father) three times faster than everyone else's.

Margaret lit up again, and it did wonders for my mood… that she was so obviously happy to see me, and so receptive to the Disneyland idea. "I'd love to," she repeated. "And you can stay here tonight. I have a spare room, although I'm afraid there's only a pull-out couch in there, not an actual bed. Is that OK?"

It was better than OK, it was perfect. If I stayed with her, I could keep a close eye on her, which was the whole point of the trip, after all.

She showed me around her adorable home, a single-story bungalow that couldn't have been bigger than 1000 square feet, but it was welcoming and nicely decorated. "Very little here is mine," she confessed as she got the pull-out couch in the guest room ready for me, dragging blankets out of storage. She explained she was only renting for now, until she decided if she was going to settle in the area permanently. "I'm still that Army brat who's a bit leery about staying in one place for any length of time," she said with a smile. "I love southern California, it's so pretty. But I'm just not sure yet."

She tossed me one end of the blanket and we made up the couch as a super-efficient team. "Why did you leave Boston?"

She shrugged. "It was a combination of a bad breakup back there, and a really good job offer out here, at Mercy Hospital."

The bed made, I took a long look at her and she blushed under my scrutiny. "Despite your cold, Margaret, you really look terrific." She was thinner than the last time I'd seen her, but thinner in a healthy way. As with all of us, she looked so much better post-war: out from under the wretched olive-drab clothing, no longer carrying the weight of all that horror and responsibility, and enjoying an infinitely better diet and lifestyle.

It wasn't late, but she admitted to feeling awful, and (after I made sure she took a Vitamin C with a full glass of milk) I told her to go to bed. I wanted her to get at least nine solid hours of sleep so she'd be OK for our Disney trip the next day. I was beat myself, so after a half-hour of watching Perry Como's show on the TV in her living room, I crawled into my couch-bed in the guest room. You would think I'd drift right off, but I ended up tossing and turning for hours.

_She's going to die, sir. Soon._

But why and how? I'd gotten myself out here, had bullshitted my way into her house for at least a one-night stay, but I was no closer to knowing what the hell to do to keep her alive. That's assuming Radar's premonition was correct to begin with, and that he was also right about the danger coming "soon."

What if he was off, even by a week? I'd be back in Maine by then, right? Well, I pretty much had to be. Considering I had left Maine on a whim, I was lucky that I worked in my own father's practice, and that he hadn't been particularly interested in knowing the reason for my impromptu trip. If you looked up "unflappable" in the dictionary, you'd probably see my dad's picture there. Most of the time he was strangely unconcerned about the things I did in my off hours. I think he had gotten to the point of trusting me unconditionally, and I think my time away at war had helped him get there.

Whether he could make do without me or not, I couldn't leave him in the lurch for very long. It wouldn't be right. But how long _was_ I going to be out here—a week? Two? I hadn't bought a round-trip plane ticket, because I hadn't known. In the back of my mind, I really did believe I would be heading to San Francisco to see B.J. once I had finished up with Margaret…

And that choice of words_—finished up with Margaret—_made me stop and laugh, but only for a second before the intense worry rushed back in.

_Tell me again, Pierce… what are we doing here?_

_She's going to die, sir. Soon._

Fact: Sure, she was sick, but it was only a cold. The woman was a nurse, she knew a cold when she had one.

Fact: I did not own or carry a gun. I've always been pretty adamant on this point. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune… but I will not carry a gun. Suppose we were out on the street tomorrow and some crazed mugger came along and put a knife to her throat or a pistol to her head. All I would have were my wits and my brawn. And my brawn was nothing to brag about, let me tell you.

Fact: If it was going to be a car accident, it could very well be _me_ driving her to her doom, since we would be traveling an hour and a half up to Anaheim in the morning to visit Disneyland.

Final fact: This impulsive jaunt across the country to play superhero was perhaps the wackiest, most asinine thing I'd ever done in my life.

And it had a hell of a lot of competition for that honor, believe me.


	7. Chapter 7

Wacky things I've done in my life. Well, we'd probably be here all day if I were to compile a list. My most manic antics (or "mantics," if you will) came during those lost years of 1950 to '53, the direct result of being held captive in Korea. When you're a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist who's thrust into the middle of a war, well, it really does a number on your conscience. Not to mention your nerves. And I can tell you from first-hand experience, you kind of act out.

Among the more preposterous pranks: I tried to drag an officers' latrine to North Korea… while a general was inside it. My partner in crime Trapper and I cut an entire wall out of Henry Blake's office in order to trade his oak desk for some vital supplies. My later partner in crime B.J. and I put Donald Penobscot in a full body cast the night before his wedding to Margaret. Oh yeah, and I also barged into the Panmunjom peace talks… very much uninvited, and even more uninhibited.

Craziness, I know.

Then of course there was the _actual _craziness—not hyperbole, but an honest-to-God nervous breakdown, just as the war was winding down. Yes, it's decades later, but I sometimes still think about that incident on the bus. If you don't mind, I'd rather not go into it now, though. I talked myself out with Sidney Freedman at the time, and again after I was home, with him and other doctors like him. It was a long road to recovery, and I do believe I got there, even if the horror remains with me to a certain extent.

That's OK. None of us should ever entirely forget what we went through over there, no matter how traumatic. My entire Korean War experience, including that night, informs the person that I am today.

To quote one of my dear old dad's great profundities, life is sometimes sublime and sometimes shitty. You just gotta roll with it.

I looked around Margaret's guest room as I lay there, noting that all the walls were bare. Not surprising, no personal touches in a spare room that was rarely (if ever) used, in a rented house. But actually, as I looked further, there _was _one photo on display, propped on a bookshelf: Margaret posing with her father, taken since Korea. The bookshelf itself held only a few books, all of them medical except for _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, presumably the copy that Charles had given her. That made me smile.

But the hour was getting late, and what was I doing with my eyes open? I shut them and rolled over for the hundredth time, trying to find my way to snoozeland.

You might be wondering why I was lying in a room down the hall from the former "Hot Lips" Houlihan and not thinking about making a play for her. Well it certainly wasn't because I'd suddenly become chaste or noble. As of 1956, I was still quite the incorrigible playboy. And for a couple years after that, too.

I did eventually marry, but not until I was 38 years old, to a rare flower with the much-too-common name of Susan. We met at the Crabapple Cove Lobster Festival. She was covering it for the Courier, our hometown newspaper, and she interviewed Dad and me as we sat there drinking beer and eating lobster. I'd had more beer than lobster, and my mouth was saying things without any prior approval from my brain. Dad kept trying to interrupt me, worried my drunken purple prose was going to find its way into print, embarrassing us both. But all Susan ended up writing in her article was that both Dr. Pierces had a great time. I called to thank her for her discretion and while we were chatting, I asked her out. On our first date, she corrected my grammar when I said, "If I can't trust my father, who can I trust?" ("You mean _whom_, Hawkeye.") It was love at first nitpick.

We were married barefoot on the beach, because she said that was how she always envisioned her wedding. For our first-dance song at the reception, she selected Jerry Lee Lewis's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." Did I mention that she's an unusual woman?

I'll spare you the suspense: yes, we are still married. But it hasn't been a perfect marriage—not even close. I was unfaithful to her a couple of times, it pains me to admit. We were even separated once, for nearly five months. But by some miracle, my dear Susan and I are still together, and next year we'll be celebrating our 40th anniversary.

We only had one child, a daughter we named Diana. I had married so late in life that I didn't have the energy to raise more than one kid. Diana didn't have any interest in going into medicine, which—I won't lie to you—was a little disappointing. But she went to Vassar, where she averaged a 3.9 GPA, and after graduating she took a position as a high-school Lit teacher in Kennebunkport. When she was 24, she married a sweetheart of a guy named Tom, an Algebra teacher at the same school, and they have given us two boisterous grandsons, Ricky and (I kid you not) Rex. I adore—you might even say "worship"—my sweet, smart daughter, but at the time, I gave her all kinds of grief over that name choice. "What, 'Fido' wasn't good enough for your second-born?" Diana only rolled her eyes at me. Nobody does an eyeroll like my daughter.

But back to that darkened guest room in Margaret Houlihan's cozy La Mesa bungalow. The truth is, I actually did consider slipping out of my bed and snuggling my way into hers. The temptation was certainly there. The two of us had a history, of course. We'd had a hostile beginning, then a sort of wary warming-up period, then a sexual dalliance—fleeting and fiery—before we'd ultimately ended up at our current status of steadfast friends. I thought it might be possible for us to take a brief digression in that rocky road of ours… just throw caution to the wind and heat up the sheets for a night, as long as we both agreed it was nothing more than scratching an itch.

In fact, I nearly threw off my covers and boldly marched to her room to pitch the idea.

But if you want to know the real, honest-to-God reason I didn't go through with it, here it is: She was sick. And one of the biggest turn-offs known to man is a woman with a nasty cold.

Some knight in shining armor, huh?

I settled for recalling, quite vividly, our one night of passion, in an abandoned hut when we had found ourselves lost in enemy territory. Never let it be said that Hawkeye Pierce didn't seize any opportunity to, uh, seize a beautiful woman.

In the middle of that night, we'd been rattled awake by bombs exploding outside our temporary refuge, all too close. It sounded like the world was coming to an end, and we were scared to death. And yeah, having the impression that you could die at any moment does have a way of making you do things you wouldn't normally do.

I can give you a lot of excuses, but let's cut the bullshit. There was a chemistry there. All our bickering or even outright hostility over the years wasn't because we were indifferent to one another. You don't get a flame without sparks, and you don't get sparks without friction.

Metaphorically speaking, we nearly burned the hut down that night.

But it wasn't love—not romantic love—and nothing ever came of us after that one memorable night. Except a lasting and beautiful friendship, and that made the hellish experience of getting lost, injured, and terrified completely worthwhile.

As I was musing on this and other mysteries of life, I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew the alarm was jolting me awake, causing me to nearly fall off the couch-bed. I did the two things I always did when an alarm woke me: spouted out a string of curse words and smacked the snooze button.

But then my eyes popped open and I flung myself off the couch-bed and onto my feet after all. Oh man, I'd almost forgotten—this was the day I was going to Disneyland!

Once a kid, always a kid.

While it never left my mind for even a second that the drive to Anaheim in and of itself could end up being a fatal mistake, and as a result, I drove with such tension in my shoulders that I was hunched almost comically over the steering wheel… it was an uneventful trip. Margaret noticed my anxiety but only remarked on it in an offhand way, apparently assuming I just didn't enjoy driving the California highways.

Her cold wasn't magically gone this morning, of course, but she reported she was feeling a lot better. All that sleep had done her good. She was so well-rested, in fact, that she was babbling in the most migraine-inducing way about all the minute details of her life since the last time we'd seen each other. Some of it was interesting, sure, but a lot of it was so numbingly tedious that I had a fleeting moment when I wondered if _I_ was the one who was going to end up killing her. It was nothing to joke about—I knew that then as I know it now—but you have to realize how completely bizarre the whole situation was. Radar had had some kind of psychic event that told him Margaret was going to die, and here I was, only a day later, driving her off to Disneyland as if that were some kind of panacea, so we could ride the teacups and commune with Mickey Mouse.

"Absurd" didn't even begin to describe it.

Maybe it wasn't a cure-all, but Disneyland did turn out to be every bit as enchanting as I'd expected, and we spent hours and hours making our way around, taking it all in. We did the Jungle Cruise and the Stagecoach Ride. We rode on Dumbo the Flying Elephant and hopped a Rocket to the Moon. We had a spin in the teacups and felt slightly silly taking a turn on the carousel (though that didn't stop us). We ate junk food and laughed and strolled, wide-eyed, up and down Main Street U.S.A. We acted like a couple of kids, and felt like it too.

When we stopped at the Shooting Gallery so Margaret could try her luck at winning a prize… well, she _was _an Army brat, after all. _Of course _she knew how to shoot a gun. Had I tried, I wouldn't have even come close to hitting as many innocent mechanical ducks as she did. She won herself a huge stuffed Dumbo, and as the man behind the counter handed it to her, she took it like a woman in a dream. Her eyes were sparkling, her face was flush with excitement and with the pride of having won. It's the kind of empty phrase that people use too often, but in this case, it was on the money: she was glowing.

She had a great day, I just want to make that clear. I'm willing to bet it was one of the best days of her adult life.

I know it was one of mine.


	8. Chapter 8

We were both wiped out by early evening and opted to head back to her place even though there were plenty of attractions we hadn't gotten around to. Margaret was still not feeling 100 percent, and as for me, I hadn't slept much the night before. We were running on fumes.

Truth be told, I didn't even spend a lot of time worrying during our drive back to La Mesa about having a car accident. By this time, especially being in such high spirits after the Disneyland visit, I was fairly convinced that nothing was going to happen after all. Radar had simply been wrong, that's all… there was a first time for everything. Just ask Annie Schaffer, who was 17 when I gave her a first time she probably still hasn't forgotten.

As I parked in front of Margaret's house, she stifled a yawn and asked me when I was expected at B.J.'s. I blinked at her, mind gone blank. Then I remembered my subterfuge, the story that I'd been on my way up to San Francisco to see him. I managed to spit out, "Couple days. Is it… could I stay with you until then?"

She grinned, still clutching that stuffed Dumbo in her lap. "Of course you can, Hawkeye. You're always welcome in my home, you know that."

She unlocked the door and we dragged our weary asses inside. It was going to be another early night for us; we were suddenly about as boring as an old married couple, and having just as much sex… which is to say, none. I shuffled to my guest room, pulling at my sweaty T-shirt as I went, and she called out in my direction, "I'm going to make some tea. Would you like any?"

"No thanks."

I like to think I noticed that something was amiss right away, but in retrospect, I honestly don't know. I was dog-tired but I desperately wanted a shower, and there was a raging debate going on in my head… _Bed or shower? Bed or shower?_

I plopped onto the couch-bed and started to yank off my sneakers. I could hear rattling in the kitchen, where Margaret was presumably making her tea.

_C'mon, Pierce, it's not that big a decision. Bed or shower?_

Whether I had noticed before that instant or not… well, it doesn't matter. I was suddenly, acutely aware of the smell of rotten eggs. I had a befuddled thought that went something like: _I thought Margaret was making tea, so why am I smelling eggs…?_

And then it hit me—more like slammed into me, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I froze for only a millisecond, then managed to suck air back into me. I burst out of the guest room and screamed, "Out of the house, Margaret! _Now!_"

She must have only heard my shouting and not the words, because her response was a quizzical, "Hawkeye?"

So I turned up the volume and put as much urgency into my voice as I could. "We need to get out of the house! _Right now!_" As I yelled, I stormed into her kitchen and saw her standing there, oh so close to the stove… I lunged at her, roughly grabbed her by the hand, and yanked her to the front door—

—and out of it

—and across the front yard, into the street and frantically across it, her screaming at me the whole way, things like, "Are you crazy? What the hell is wrong? You're hurting me!"

—until we were nearly at the front step of the house across the street from her bungalow

—and that is precisely when the world exploded.

I pulled her down to the ground, covering her with my body, as debris from her demolished house rained down across the street from us, and in the street itself, but not quite reaching us. I looked back over my shoulder but kept her head covered, not wanting her to see.

It was in ruins. That cute little house that she'd been living in only one minute before was completely gone. Fire raged, the debris kept on coming down as if it were originating in the clouds rather than from a structure that was no longer standing, and the heat was fierce. It was hard to breathe.

Still not letting her see what was going on, I leaned over her, checking her out… hands, fingers, legs, toes… everything seemed to be present and accounted for. She started to thrash, "Let me up! I'm OK, I'm OK, but let me up!"

So I gave in, rolling my protective body off of her and letting her see what had happened. Well, she probably already knew. There was only one thing that explosion could have been.

I sat there mutely as she stared across the street at the scene. Tears fell down both her cheeks, but she was not making any noise at all.

A million jumbled thoughts rolled around in my brain, leap-frogging one another but ultimately making a kind of sense… like puzzle pieces sliding together of their own volition to form a coherent whole.

_She had a cold and wouldn't have noticed the rotten-egg smell. The odor was the telltale sign of a gas leak. She'd been about to heat water on the stove for her tea. And of course, a gas leak plus any kind of spark equals… _

_She would have died if I hadn't gotten her out of the house._

There… I formed that sentence in my dazed brain, and that was it. I fell face down into the soft grass, gasping and sobbing.

_Holy shit. I really am Superman. _

Right on the heels of that: _Radar, we did it. You did it._

Relief, gratitude, awe, release… it all came out in a torrent of tears.

I didn't understand Radar's unique ability that had enabled him to foresee this—even today, many years later, I don't understand it. But thank God I'd been open-minded enough to trust in it.

I felt Margaret's arms circle around me. She put her head against mine and cried along with me.

Neighbors were rushing out of their houses and screaming at us, hurling questions like "What the hell happened?" "Are you two all right?" "What's going on?" Dogs up and down the block were barking frantically. Largely oblivious to all the commotion, Margaret and I held each other there on the grass for a long time, until the wailing sirens got closer and closer.


	9. Chapter 9

The next few days blurred by. Margaret and I were unharmed physically except for some minor contusions, but we were in shock. We had a tendency to stare off into space for long moments as our neurons took a powder and communication became impossible.

A couple times, to lighten the mood, I asked her if she was in need of some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Somehow, hearing that familiar exasperated reply of "Pierce!" made me feel immeasurably better, in spite of the rejection.

Of course I told her, only hours after the incident, that Radar had known something was going to happen. That it was his phone call that had sent me scrambling across the United States. She broke down and cried in my arms, not for the first time since the explosion, or the last, but I sensed this time it was in stunned appreciation for a friend who had a precious gift and knew how to honor it.

Somehow we carried on. We got ourselves rooms at the El Cortez hotel in San Diego. We did a _lot _of shopping. Margaret had lost everything except the clothes on her back. Even the stuffed Dumbo elephant was gone; the last I had seen of it, she'd placed it on her couch just as we'd stepped in the front door. For some reason I couldn't articulate, that made me profoundly sad.

All I had lost was the contents of a hastily packed suitcase plus my sneakers, and those had been old and coming apart anyway. Even so, I joined Margaret on her shopping expeditions and bought a slew of clothing I didn't really need, in a show of solidarity.

We were both plagued by sleeplessness at first, so we would stay up late in her hotel room, playing gin rummy or Go Fish, with the TV on to fill the silences. I will tell you that for the first two nights, I slept in her bed, but it was just a couple of friends holding onto each other, offering comfort and security and touch. We'd shared near-death—again—and I think that might bring people closer together than lovemaking does.

Six days after her home was obliterated, Margaret accepted a generous offer from one of her fellow nurses at Mercy Hospital: she could stay at this woman's house for as long as she needed to, until she found a new home.

I looked into Margaret's eyes as she told me about this development, and I understood that I could head for home now. She would be fine.

As we stood holding onto each other at the departure gate in the airport, more than a little hesitant to let go, I handed her a slip of paper with Sidney Freedman's phone number on it. She later told me she used it often, and that made me smile. Nobody helped people get through shit like Sidney Freedman did.

As if the Korean War hadn't been enough, suddenly Margaret, Radar, and I had an even greater bond. Since Margaret now deemed me "the bravest man in the world" (her words, not mine), she was forever apologizing for all the times she had called me a coward and a bum and a disgrace in our earliest days as colleagues. Even now, she still apologizes when she sees me. I wave my hand and tell her that was a lifetime ago, it's long forgotten. We'd mended those particular fences even before we'd left Korea.

It makes me uncomfortable when she says I saved her life. It may be true, but the greater truth is that Radar and I did it as a team.

It's 1997 now and I'm an old man, a fact I'm reminded of constantly. I have to get up twice during the night to pee. I still miss my father every single day, and he shuffled off this mortal coil 21 years ago. I have a 9-year-old grandson who idolizes Bart Simpson. My wife refuses to acknowledge her worsening hearing loss and would rather pretend she didn't find a gut-busting line in a movie funny than admit she didn't hear it.

"At my back I always hear  
Time's winged chariot hurrying near…"

That line comes to mind often nowadays. The narrator in Andrew Marvell's poem was trying like hell to get into his girlfriend's pants, but that image—"time's winged chariot hurrying near"—is powerful in any context. Nobody is on this earth forever.

I'm old, maybe a little bit wiser than the 30-year-old surgeon who went off to war, probably not anywhere near as wisecracking. And there's still a lot of shit I don't know or understand. But there are certain irrefutable truths in Hawkeye Pierce's world: Paradise is a tiny hamlet in Maine called Crabapple Cove. Going into medicine was the best thing I ever did, even if it did get my ticket stamped to the Korean War. In spite of everything I've seen and done, I still don't know if I believe there's a God.

And since 1950, there has always been one other irrefutable truth, and that is Radar O'Reilly simply _knows _things.

Or rather, _knew _things.

Radar passed away last week, which is what prompted this memoir to begin with. He was only 65, but as he was heading out early one morning to milk the cows, he suffered a myocardial infarction, more commonly known as a heart attack. He was gone by the time the ambulance arrived. I don't suppose he had an inkling of _that_ ahead of time, or he surely would have gotten himself to a doctor.

I dropped everything and traveled to Ottumwa for the funeral, of course. As did Margaret, as did Klinger. The three of us huddled together as the casket was lowered into the ground. It didn't seem possible that the baby brother of our group was really gone.

Back during the war, at the 4077th, Radar had idolized us surgeons, calling us heroes while modestly downplaying his own role as company clerk. He would often say that he didn't save lives, all he did was keep the hospital running. As if that were no big deal.

Well, there are all kinds of ways to save a life. Sometimes a life can be saved by simply making a phone call.

There are also all kinds of heroes. Take it from me, Radar O'Reilly was one.

Finest kind.


End file.
